As fun Dune is, both novel and game, I'd still like to stray away from using it as the new salt.
0
EveriineWise Old Swordsbird / BrontaurIndianapolis, IN, USA
If there is a super glut of sulfur and not enough salt because the method of getting both provides much more sulfur than salt, is there any reason the formula can't simply be adjusted to produce salt and sulfur around 50/50 and not 25/75?
Everiine is a man, and is very manly. This MAN before you is so manly you might as well just gender bend right now, cause he's the manliest man that you ever did see. His manly shape has spurned many women and girlyer men to boughs of fainting. He stands before you in a manly manerific typical man-like outfit which is covered in his manly motto: "I am a man!"
Daraius said: You gotta risk it for the biscuit.
Pony power all the way, yo. The more Brontaurs the better.
As for why I insist salt and sulfur, is because I am looking forward and trying to mitigate any other problems that may arise. Just outright switching it to sulfur, and doing nothing else, will just cause massive sulfur debts and it skyrocketing. Not sure why it has to be one or the other and can't be both, but I think both of these ideas could solve the issue at hand, to recap:
Aethertraders have a payout toggle like racetrack Add sulfur as an option for breaking down goop items
If it's that concerning to have sulfur alone (even with guaranteed fails coming) then that logically indicates the sulfur stocks will likely get drained before hitting the salt stocks that are already suffering. It might ease things up for a bit but anyone with a bit of money could also just buy out the existing sulfur stocks to re-sell at the current salt prices. If this is necessary even with guaranteed fails coming then it's just putting bandaids on top of each other.
This actually brings up another benefit of moving salt to village generation, you would have comm quests to provide it directly to people trying to get it, there would be a pricing the admin can more easily influence in village comm shops, and orgs would be given the rest to distribute. All of which could put a downward pressure on crazy pricing as well as draining gold out of the economy with village shops.
According to admin, the numbers for salt/sulfur should already be around 50/50: 5% fail chance on gemcut, then 50/50 for sulfur and salt.
I agree that making it spices would not solve the problem. The problem is that goop is worth a lot more than comms, aethertrading gives way more goop than it should, and as a result salt (or any other commodity that becomes required) will be bought out at all costs, leaving none for actual crafting.
The root fix of this is to nerf aethertrades either by making it so that each player can only trade once per weave (thereby both limiting the amount of goop one person can generate/limiting the amount of salt they use and opening it up to newer players); by reducing the amount of goop generated per trade so that it becomes less of a no-brainer to do trades; or, if not, just acknowledge that there's going to be a massive goop glut and a few whales are going to be able to get as much goop as they want and just nix the salt part entirely.
(Before people get mad, I include myself in that whales comment)
(clan): Falmiis says, "Aramelise, verb, 1. adorn with many flowers."
It's also being worsened by the ongoing issue where comm generation doesn't always have a great relationship with demand of those comms.
Salt and Sulfur are both pretty direct examples because they, apparently, actually have the same generation chances but vary on how much demand there is for them, even before trades.
There is already a glut of sulfur, because people are trying to get salt. I easily get 300-400 sulfur (3-4x the amount of salt) per 500 gems. I'm not sure about others, but just looking at the plex shops, there is storage of sulfur by a long shot.
I would rather see a way to convert failure comms into other failure comm than some sort of quest (due to limits on quests like reset time, that only one person can do the quest at a time, etc).
If it's that concerning to have sulfur alone (even with guaranteed fails coming) then that logically indicates the sulfur stocks will likely get drained before hitting the salt stocks that are already suffering. It might ease things up for a bit but anyone with a bit of money could also just buy out the existing sulfur stocks to re-sell at the current salt prices. If this is necessary even with guaranteed fails coming then it's just putting bandaids on top of each other.
No, no it doesn't logically indicate that. It is already well established that you push back on any suggestions I make, good or bad. There is no logic in stating that wanting to use salt and sulfur as a cost together means there isn't enough sulfur, and never will be. What it is pointing out though, is that by having two options available, it lessens the strain on both, thus keeping their costs down and still making it available for other uses. As things are now, using Aramel's numbers, 100 gems may yield around 5 gemcut fails per 100 cuts. For average sake, we're going unartifacted and highrolling the outcome, so you'd get roughly 10 salt and 15 sulfur as an example. You bring up game design and how you should look forward to make a better fix, but argue against said solutions with faulty logic, as it would be a good decision to grant multiple commodities as a cost to break down goop, as well as make that toggle.
I'd just like to put it out there that I've stopped accepting payment in gold coins and started accepting them in salt instead. I even received a down payment of 200 salts yesterday, which is worth 800,000 gold coins.
You are startled as a lemon meringue pie bounces harmlessly off you after being thrown at you by Mysrai.
On a more serious note, it wouldn't be a problem if salt (or the commodity used in place of salt in future) is easily able to be generated or not locked to one profession. I wouldn't mind grinding a bit for salt or any other commodity, as long as I'm able to make my own.
You are startled as a lemon meringue pie bounces harmlessly off you after being thrown at you by Mysrai.
The root fix of this is to nerf aethertrades either by making it so that each player can only trade once per weave (thereby both limiting the amount of goop one person can generate/limiting the amount of salt they use and opening it up to newer players); by reducing the amount of goop generated per trade so that it becomes less of a no-brainer to do trades; or, if not, just acknowledge that there's going to be a massive goop glut and a few whales are going to be able to get as much goop as they want and just nix the salt part entirely.
(Before people get mad, I include myself in that whales comment)
One more possible idea - change breaking down goop items into using a set gold cost (or salt as an option). Then remove the gold reimbursed on breakdown and just make it for claiming that goop.
Ensuring gold can be sunken for the breakdown (mandatory or optional) creates an additional drain that is permanent so long as there exists demand for goop.
If salt remains an option, then you can up the number of salt comms needed to get the same effect as that base gold value in order to make the gold convenience more appealing.
Limits on trade-ins per weave might be nice too, but I think that's more reflective of how in-demand Rubie is of late. Refining food is a much bigger pain in the rear, but I have a much easier time getting trades with Gioia. The last dozen or so times I've tried to catch Rubie, on the other hand, someone always gets there first - often before I even set foot on the bubble. I think that's more illustrative of how imbalanced Jewellery is, in addition to the aetheritem it provides making it easier to catch all the aethertraders when you have no bubblixes of your own.
I believe in the slow step process and seeing what we can do before limiting everything down. I'm onboard for putting limits on, but give them some time to play out and see if we need more. I like the idea of using gold as a breakdown, and to add on could just make salt or whatever commodity a catalyst versus mandatory:
AETHERGOOP BREAK <item> <qty> [SALT]
That way if we have say 30 scarves, I could break those down and only get the goop, as you suggested, or can use an equivalent amount of salt, or whatever combination we make the catalyst, to get the gold as well. I think your idea merged in with more items being added in as acceptable catalysts could help level out the market once more without limiting how many trades a person can do each weave.
If this equilibrium isn't found, even with this implementation down the line, then we can bring in limiting how many trades per weave until we find an agreeable balance between the big-time traders and those producing the catalysts.
Side note, @Kistan, NEVAH! Power to those without the hammer!! /sarcasm
Spice generation is much higher than salt generation though. Its sort of almost pseduo unlimited because there more plants in the basin than a number of herbalists can harvest in the playtime avaliable.
Salts limited by gem production which is limited by mob spawns.
I don't understand something. We have separate camps when it comes to economy. We have those that do not wish for self-sufficiency, to require trading of goods, and then we have the other side that doesn't care, they just want more access to said thing. Processed commodities (see earlier definition if you need to) are locked to a trade skill and honestly should stay that way, as that is just one more avenue of how that trade makes any money, or leverage in a trade. I'm still against spice being made into the commodity per use, but not as a list of catalysts available. I'd like to refrain from using any processed commodity used for another trade to be used as the breakdown material.
If it HAS to be goop items requiring a breakdown, why make it one comm? Why not make ANY of the trade-fail comms usable for it? Then there's no pressure on one item to be stupidly overpriced, and finds a use for a bunch of things that don't have a huge amount of demand normally - spices, salt, sulphur, mercury (anything I've missed?).
Mercury has a demand for quicksilver, salt and sugar for cooking, spices for cooking and lorecrafting. I agree that making it any could be helpful, though I'd personally hate to see mercury wasted on goop breakdown.
There is already a glut of sulfur, because people are trying to get salt. I easily get 300-400 sulfur (3-4x the amount of salt) per 500 gems. I'm not sure about others, but just looking at the plex shops, there is storage of sulfur by a long shot.
I would rather see a way to convert failure comms into other failure comm than some sort of quest (due to limits on quests like reset time, that only one person can do the quest at a time, etc).
If it's that concerning to have sulfur alone (even with guaranteed fails coming) then that logically indicates the sulfur stocks will likely get drained before hitting the salt stocks that are already suffering. It might ease things up for a bit but anyone with a bit of money could also just buy out the existing sulfur stocks to re-sell at the current salt prices. If this is necessary even with guaranteed fails coming then it's just putting bandaids on top of each other.
No, no it doesn't logically indicate that. It is already well established that you push back on any suggestions I make, good or bad. There is no logic in stating that wanting to use salt and sulfur as a cost together means there isn't enough sulfur, and never will be. What it is pointing out though, is that by having two options available, it lessens the strain on both, thus keeping their costs down and still making it available for other uses. As things are now, using Aramel's numbers, 100 gems may yield around 5 gemcut fails per 100 cuts. For average sake, we're going unartifacted and highrolling the outcome, so you'd get roughly 10 salt and 15 sulfur as an example. You bring up game design and how you should look forward to make a better fix, but argue against said solutions with faulty logic, as it would be a good decision to grant multiple commodities as a cost to break down goop, as well as make that toggle.
The default for the majority of things that require comms in this game is to have a specific layout, designs are an exception to this but when you go beyond that it's pretty rare.
Ecology smudges, Alchemy recipes, Shamans fire preparations, etc. That is the norm, part of this is likely because it is a simpler matter for the economy to have more specific recipes because then you can tweak generation on those up and down to make sure things are as available as necessary without creating oversupply where comms get devalued to the point that things like sulfur and spices seem to sell for as little as 1gp.
What you're suggesting is an exception to that norm and you seem to think that just because you like the idea everyone else should just smile and nod. You provide reasoning that indicates you don't think the sulfur generation is enough, then when called out on that you say that would be fine we should just have two options just because.
The post you quote to back yourself up has been countered by admin advice that the salt vs sulfur chance should actually be around 50/50, if that is the case but players can provide actual data to show that isn't the case over a large number of gemcuts (100 might work for determining failure chance but it's useless for determining salt v sulfur chances) then it's more likely that the code for that area is bugged, which ultimately means solutions are being presented to bandaid something that is not working as intended.
Honestly, you should also take a long hard look at your own posts, the suggestions of quests and bringing an increasingly necessary commodity into line with other comms is a far cleaner fix. Doing something that simple could bring stability for reasons already outlined that you've pretty much outright ignored, likely because it's not your idea. Now you're talking about the impacts of messing around with other markets (which is what has been repeatedly pointed out as an issue this entire thread) despite repeated mentions to look at different places to implement a resolution.
You finish your post by assert that your idea is a good one but don't really provide an actual justification for why which is what's being asked for. Things should only be done because they need to be, if sulfur alone was made the breakdown comm and it's significiantly underutilised right now then the possibility exists that it could be relatively easy to swap the other things that use it to other comms so that sulfur is exclusively used for this one purpose. If sulfur is so unnecessary right now why is it being in demand an issue at all?
The default for the majority of things that require comms in this game is to have a specific layout, designs are an exception to this but when you go beyond that it's pretty rare.
Ecology smudges, Alchemy recipes, Shamans fire preparations, etc. That is the norm, part of this is likely because it is a simpler matter for the economy to have more specific recipes because then you can tweak generation on those up and down to make sure things are as available as necessary without creating oversupply where comms get devalued to the point that things like sulfur and spices seem to sell for as little as 1gp.
What you're suggesting is an exception to that norm and you seem to think that just because you like the idea everyone else should just smile and nod. You provide reasoning that indicates you don't think the sulfur generation is enough, then when called out on that you say that would be fine we should just have two options just because.
The post you quote to back yourself up has been countered by admin advice that the salt vs sulfur chance should actually be around 50/50, if that is the case but players can provide actual data to show that isn't the case over a large number of gemcuts (100 might work for determining failure chance but it's useless for determining salt v sulfur chances) then it's more likely that the code for that area is bugged, which ultimately means solutions are being presented to bandaid something that is not working as intended.
Honestly, you should also take a long hard look at your own posts, the suggestions of quests and bringing an increasingly necessary commodity into line with other comms is a far cleaner fix. Doing something that simple could bring stability for reasons already outlined that you've pretty much outright ignored, likely because it's not your idea. Now you're talking about the impacts of messing around with other markets (which is what has been repeatedly pointed out as an issue this entire thread) despite repeated mentions to look at different places to implement a resolution.
You finish your post by assert that your idea is a good one but don't really provide an actual justification for why which is what's being asked for. Things should only be done because they need to be, if sulfur alone was made the breakdown comm and it's significiantly underutilised right now then the possibility exists that it could be relatively easy to swap the other things that use it to other comms so that sulfur is exclusively used for this one purpose. If sulfur is so unnecessary right now why is it being in demand an issue at all?
Second thought, just editing my response away. I'm better than this to laugh at how silly this is.
tl;dr @Estarra whatever the single commodity you choose, it will become very scarce and the price will go through the roof. Removing the need for a comm (ideal) or making mutiple comms suitable would stop messing with the market in general, and seem to be really simple fixes.
There probably doesn't need to be a comm tax, ultimately anyone that has enough gold will just buy out all of the comms that are involved in the tax.
Fail comms as a concept seem to just be problematic, looking over the plex, they're either saturated to the point of worthlessness or barely available (if at all).
Fail comms moving to village production means you can limit the amount generated so that they don't become oversaturated. You could leave the fail chances in there if you wanted, but the question exists as to what value they add to the game.
Removing the comm tax on breakdowns is ultimately the simplest solution. If part of the intention was for it to be a comm sink that could be addressed through the shifting said comms to villages and tweaking their generation rates.
If there's still a desire to limit breakdowns through a comm. Shifting to sulfur exclusively offers the benefit that, if it is so underutilised, the potential exists to shift away it's actual uses to a different comm and dedicate the comm for the purpose of breaking down goop. With village generation of sulfur, this would mean you can generate sulfur in equivalent rates to the amount of goop items you expect to enter the game daily. This would mean the price would vary up and down with demand in villages, orgs would also get their tithes which they could sell to get money for large scale projects which can then remove that money from the game rather than it circulating among players.
tl;dr @Estarra whatever the single commodity you choose, it will become very scarce and the price will go through the roof. Removing the need for a comm (ideal) or making mutiple comms suitable would stop messing with the market in general, and seem to be really simple fixes.
Probably also worth reiterating the note that even the mention of certain comms being used as an alternative has caused small price spikes on the plex.
I just finished writing a research paper for the Gaudi library
Using Rubie, each trade nets the trader 1,200,000 gold (assuming 20 goop is worth one credit and one credit is worth 25000 gold)
That takes 80 salt, no other costs involved so in a perfect market, you would expect the price of the scarce salt to drift up to eliminate this profit margin. Why would the jeweller sell it for less?
So salt will increase to 1.200,000/80 = 15000 gold per salt.
Spice is the one riftable comm that I have an excessive abundance of. I've farmed up 2k in the past day by farming other herbs, not sure what the drop rate on it is but it seems high. I've got 30k of it stores and I gave 20k of it away to a chef some months ago and I sell it for 1 gold because of how easy it is to get and how little anyone seems to need of it.
Mercury is pretty few and far between, I'll maybe get 50-100 mercury doing a big cooking session and I only really need to do a big cooking session super rarely. Salt is similar its a rare one to farm up breaking gems down.
Letting you break down with multi comms sounds good to me but spice is the only one I can see atm thats easy to make and generate. Although I wouldnt mind just dropping the comm cost for break downs totally.
If a cooking comm is going to be used, then it should be able to be generated by cooks.
Also (and salt also has this problem) making this aether trade goop mechanic require a comm that is only accessible to one profession to make is just going to make all the money flow to people of that profession. And, being that it's a cooking comm that is used for it, it negatively affects the income of cooks. Almost every cooking design uses spices.
You are startled as a lemon meringue pie bounces harmlessly off you after being thrown at you by Mysrai.
I am curious if you have ever tried herbalism. Spices are not like other failcomms. They are super common and cooks simply cannot use them all up. There's even a spice pie that is 100% spices, I used to use that for the hourly cooking curio gen. I still use it now to make a hundred or so free pies that I convert into crit food. Spices are everywhere, you just don't see it all listed because the demand is so much lower than the supply that people literally throw spices away.
I do like being able to use salt OR sulfur OR spices. I think it would end up with people mostly sticking to spices though, but it gives other escape valves just in case. If it turns out that somehow it wipes out spice supplies, then maybe just remove the comm usage entirely. I would prefer to take smaller steps (try out more options first), then the larger one if there is still an issue.
No, I haven't tried out herbalism, and probably won't, because I like cooking too much and right now I'd rather spend credits on something else than another trade skill.
Instead of making it spices only (I agree spices will be better than salt, but it doesn't solve the problem) just make it salt-spice-mercury-sulfur-other fail comms if we have to use comms at all. If it's going to be a necessity, why place it all in the monopoly of one profession? That never turns out well.
Also, why do we have to try it out first, then remove comm usage entirely when removing comm usage is obviously the better option? Why not just directly do that?
Edit: cooks can't use up all the spices, but the aether traders possibly can.
You are startled as a lemon meringue pie bounces harmlessly off you after being thrown at you by Mysrai.
Comments
If it's that concerning to have sulfur alone (even with guaranteed fails coming) then that logically indicates the sulfur stocks will likely get drained before hitting the salt stocks that are already suffering. It might ease things up for a bit but anyone with a bit of money could also just buy out the existing sulfur stocks to re-sell at the current salt prices.
If this is necessary even with guaranteed fails coming then it's just putting bandaids on top of each other.
This actually brings up another benefit of moving salt to village generation, you would have comm quests to provide it directly to people trying to get it, there would be a pricing the admin can more easily influence in village comm shops, and orgs would be given the rest to distribute. All of which could put a downward pressure on crazy pricing as well as draining gold out of the economy with village shops.
I agree that making it spices would not solve the problem. The problem is that goop is worth a lot more than comms, aethertrading gives way more goop than it should, and as a result salt (or any other commodity that becomes required) will be bought out at all costs, leaving none for actual crafting.
The root fix of this is to nerf aethertrades either by making it so that each player can only trade once per weave (thereby both limiting the amount of goop one person can generate/limiting the amount of salt they use and opening it up to newer players); by reducing the amount of goop generated per trade so that it becomes less of a no-brainer to do trades; or, if not, just acknowledge that there's going to be a massive goop glut and a few whales are going to be able to get as much goop as they want and just nix the salt part entirely.
(Before people get mad, I include myself in that whales comment)
Salt and Sulfur are both pretty direct examples because they, apparently, actually have the same generation chances but vary on how much demand there is for them, even before trades.
No, no it doesn't logically indicate that. It is already well established that you push back on any suggestions I make, good or bad. There is no logic in stating that wanting to use salt and sulfur as a cost together means there isn't enough sulfur, and never will be. What it is pointing out though, is that by having two options available, it lessens the strain on both, thus keeping their costs down and still making it available for other uses. As things are now, using Aramel's numbers, 100 gems may yield around 5 gemcut fails per 100 cuts. For average sake, we're going unartifacted and highrolling the outcome, so you'd get roughly 10 salt and 15 sulfur as an example. You bring up game design and how you should look forward to make a better fix, but argue against said solutions with faulty logic, as it would be a good decision to grant multiple commodities as a cost to break down goop, as well as make that toggle.
I'd just like to put it out there that I've stopped accepting payment in gold coins and started accepting them in salt instead. I even received a down payment of 200 salts yesterday, which is worth 800,000 gold coins.
Ensuring gold can be sunken for the breakdown (mandatory or optional) creates an additional drain that is permanent so long as there exists demand for goop.
If salt remains an option, then you can up the number of salt comms needed to get the same effect as that base gold value in order to make the gold convenience more appealing.
Limits on trade-ins per weave might be nice too, but I think that's more reflective of how in-demand Rubie is of late. Refining food is a much bigger pain in the rear, but I have a much easier time getting trades with Gioia. The last dozen or so times I've tried to catch Rubie, on the other hand, someone always gets there first - often before I even set foot on the bubble. I think that's more illustrative of how imbalanced Jewellery is, in addition to the aetheritem it provides making it easier to catch all the aethertraders when you have no bubblixes of your own.
AETHERGOOP BREAK <item> <qty> [SALT]
That way if we have say 30 scarves, I could break those down and only get the goop, as you suggested, or can use an equivalent amount of salt, or whatever combination we make the catalyst, to get the gold as well. I think your idea merged in with more items being added in as acceptable catalysts could help level out the market once more without limiting how many trades a person can do each weave.
If this equilibrium isn't found, even with this implementation down the line, then we can bring in limiting how many trades per weave until we find an agreeable balance between the big-time traders and those producing the catalysts.
Side note, @Kistan, NEVAH! Power to those without the hammer!! /sarcasm
Ecology smudges, Alchemy recipes, Shamans fire preparations, etc. That is the norm, part of this is likely because it is a simpler matter for the economy to have more specific recipes because then you can tweak generation on those up and down to make sure things are as available as necessary without creating oversupply where comms get devalued to the point that things like sulfur and spices seem to sell for as little as 1gp.
What you're suggesting is an exception to that norm and you seem to think that just because you like the idea everyone else should just smile and nod. You provide reasoning that indicates you don't think the sulfur generation is enough, then when called out on that you say that would be fine we should just have two options just because.
The post you quote to back yourself up has been countered by admin advice that the salt vs sulfur chance should actually be around 50/50, if that is the case but players can provide actual data to show that isn't the case over a large number of gemcuts (100 might work for determining failure chance but it's useless for determining salt v sulfur chances) then it's more likely that the code for that area is bugged, which ultimately means solutions are being presented to bandaid something that is not working as intended.
Honestly, you should also take a long hard look at your own posts, the suggestions of quests and bringing an increasingly necessary commodity into line with other comms is a far cleaner fix.
Doing something that simple could bring stability for reasons already outlined that you've pretty much outright ignored, likely because it's not your idea. Now you're talking about the impacts of messing around with other markets (which is what has been repeatedly pointed out as an issue this entire thread) despite repeated mentions to look at different places to implement a resolution.
You finish your post by assert that your idea is a good one but don't really provide an actual justification for why which is what's being asked for.
Things should only be done because they need to be, if sulfur alone was made the breakdown comm and it's significiantly underutilised right now then the possibility exists that it could be relatively easy to swap the other things that use it to other comms so that sulfur is exclusively used for this one purpose. If sulfur is so unnecessary right now why is it being in demand an issue at all?
There probably doesn't need to be a comm tax, ultimately anyone that has enough gold will just buy out all of the comms that are involved in the tax.
Fail comms as a concept seem to just be problematic, looking over the plex, they're either saturated to the point of worthlessness or barely available (if at all).
Fail comms moving to village production means you can limit the amount generated so that they don't become oversaturated. You could leave the fail chances in there if you wanted, but the question exists as to what value they add to the game.
Removing the comm tax on breakdowns is ultimately the simplest solution. If part of the intention was for it to be a comm sink that could be addressed through the shifting said comms to villages and tweaking their generation rates.
If there's still a desire to limit breakdowns through a comm. Shifting to sulfur exclusively offers the benefit that, if it is so underutilised, the potential exists to shift away it's actual uses to a different comm and dedicate the comm for the purpose of breaking down goop.
With village generation of sulfur, this would mean you can generate sulfur in equivalent rates to the amount of goop items you expect to enter the game daily.
This would mean the price would vary up and down with demand in villages, orgs would also get their tithes which they could sell to get money for large scale projects which can then remove that money from the game rather than it circulating among players.
Using Rubie, each trade nets the trader 1,200,000 gold (assuming 20 goop is worth one credit and one credit is worth 25000 gold)
That takes 80 salt, no other costs involved so in a perfect market, you would expect the price of the scarce salt to drift up to eliminate this profit margin. Why would the jeweller sell it for less?
So salt will increase to 1.200,000/80 = 15000 gold per salt.
Which will be nice
Also (and salt also has this problem) making this aether trade goop mechanic require a comm that is only accessible to one profession to make is just going to make all the money flow to people of that profession. And, being that it's a cooking comm that is used for it, it negatively affects the income of cooks. Almost every cooking design uses spices.
Instead of making it spices only (I agree spices will be better than salt, but it doesn't solve the problem) just make it salt-spice-mercury-sulfur-other fail comms if we have to use comms at all. If it's going to be a necessity, why place it all in the monopoly of one profession? That never turns out well.
Also, why do we have to try it out first, then remove comm usage entirely when removing comm usage is obviously the better option? Why not just directly do that?
Edit: cooks can't use up all the spices, but the aether traders possibly can.